1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to data templates. More particularly, the present invention relates to delivery, organization, and management of data capture templates.
2. Description of the Related Art
A positive presence on the Internet is an important aspect of business. Many types of services, such as product and service presentation, support offerings, self help, and contact information, may be combined to create an Internet business façade. An Internet business façade usually provides a customer's first impression and may be the only point of contact for the customer. Careful design and coordinated effort are critical for providing useful Web content. Business stakeholders may work with many different groups to achieve this end. One group in particular, subject matter experts, may provide the majority of the useful content. Subject matter experts are considered intelligent and good at their specific job, but may not have Web development experience.
In order to facilitate transfer of subject matter expert knowledge to Web content, many Web content management systems, referred to simply as “content management systems,” provide data capture templates allowing direct contribution of Web content by the subject matter experts. In an example, Interwoven® Corp's TeamSite® product, and enterprise content management system, utilizes extensible markup language (XML) based data capture templates. Once data is captured in these templates, TeamSite® formats the information for the Web allowing the subject matter experts to ignore the details.
In an effort to accommodate different subject matter experts and their various content contributions, many different types of data capture templates are created and maintained. Typically, there are many similarities between the different templates allowing new interfaces to be copies and alterations of existing interfaces. This process results in data capture template development becoming a “copy-rename-modify” process with the result often an individual, non-reusable, maintenance point. When business requires broad changes, such as new Web standards or product releases, this large set of templates soon become cumbersome.